Meanwhile in Australia, Sh*t is Going Down

A few years ago, my close friend (the lion-hearted theatre artist and burlesque darling Frankie Vandellous) decided to move to Australia. This has generally sucked for me, because she’s great and I miss her. There are, however, two ways in which Frankie’s move has been beneficial:

Frankie has done some really cool things down under, and that’s awesome.

Through the power of Facebook, and Frankie’s involvement and activism, I have become more aware of the political situation in Australia (and Queensland) and though it’s not altogether pleasant, I suppose I’m glad I no longer cling to an old romantic illusion that Australia is some laid-back, kangaroo-filled utopia where the biggest problems are hot weather, too many rabbits, and massive spiders. The more you know.

So what is going down in Australia? A lot of things.

Most worrying to me, the human rights of various groups are currently being ignored or otherwise abused at various levels of Australian government. If you are an immigrant to Australia currently being held in one of Australia’s (or “third country processing”) immigration detention centres, for example, you can expect the following:

If you are an innocent child unlucky enough to have arrived in Australia as an asylum-seeker, you can expect to be indefinitely detained with your family in cramped quarters vulnerable to extreme temperatures (it’s really hot in Australia) lacking adequate sanitation and access to education and medical care. Or, if you’re one of the really unlucky kids whose parents sent you to Australia on your own, you might be held in a detention centre by yourself with no parents or guardians whatsoever. How many kids are being held in closed immigration detention centres? 1,045, according to the Australian Human Rights Commission.

Immigrants and the queer community aside, Australia is still a good place for the average hetero-normative citizen to hang out and kick back with their buds, right? Well….not if you live in Queensland, like riding motorcycles, and like hanging out with other people who like riding motorcycles. The state’s new “anti-bikie” laws can now prosecute citizens for “association” with groups considered to be criminal (whether you personally have done anything illegal or not). Suspected “associates” arrested under these new laws will be held in solitary confinement in a specially-built prison (so they can’t “associate” I guess). You can read about the laws on the Queensland Government website if you like (particularly bewildering is the new act banning gang members and “associates” from owning or working in tattoo parlours). On the surface, trying to target biker gangs might seem like a good idea, but the laws are far too broad. How would you feel if your Elks Club was disbanded because a few top-ranking members were involved in criminal activity? Or if you were arrested for being an “associate” on the basis of your membership in the aforementioned criminal Elks Club?

I’m not trying to hate on Australia. I’ve always loved the idea of Australia and I’ve always wanted to go there. Nearly every Australian I’ve met has been friendly and lovely. Which makes these kinds of news stories incredibly disappointing, and makes me wonder if my tourism dollars might be better spent elsewhere (now I know how people in other countries must be feeling about Canada nowadays).

All this is to say that we should never rest on our laurels and assume we in the English-speaking world have our shit together when it comes to human rights. We don’t. And we shouldn’t assume the United States is the only “western” country where homophobic or xenophobic laws trample on rights. It isn’t. And we shouldn’t assume that we in Canada could never stoop to these lows. Unfortunately, we can, and will, if we don’t stay informed and stay active in our democracy.

On that note, I should give Australia its due and mention that the only reason I even know about these issues is because in addition to bigoted governments, Australia also seems to have a lot of citizens willing to stand against these unjust laws and policies through social media, petitions, and other traditional and/or creative protests. So there’s a lot of bad shit going down in Australia, it’s true, but there’s a lot of good shit too.

RSS for RSS Fans!

Written content on this site is the property of Lauren Kresowaty and niftynotcool.com, unless otherwise specified. Sharing of content is encouraged with proper citation and a link back to NiftyNotCool.